Looks pretty solid, thanks. Not too big on monthly fees though. I'll probably try the demo out. How's Wealth-Lab's backtesting? Saw some very positive reviews on this site but no specifics. I've already run the trial (too early on to know what to do with it) but didn't get to the backtesting capabilities.
How did you decide that these stocks were related? Are there fundamental reasons, or are they just similar moving? I have a vague idea of how one might filter and test stocks for similar price movement. Like getting a Beta of 1.0, but one stock against another instead of an index. rlb
Well, it's 12 am saturday. I've already contributed my few celery leaves to the stone soup kettle, so I will just add some general thoughts. I see two basic limitations that need to be turned into liberation in pursuit of the simple Edge. One is the difficulty in predicting the market. That ability to predict would of course be The Edge. The second limitation in seeking that Edge is the unwillingness of people who may have found some degree of Edge to share it with others. Everyone feels the need to conceal, to not show their cards. They feel that their Edge is dependent on Secrecy, and that if exposed to the light of day (and the eyes of others) that edge would evaporate. The fear of exposing an Edge to daylight (don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour tonight!) is the first limitation in the pursuit of an Edge. So we need to turn the prospect of the Edge being known from being a limitation to being a liberation. You want to create a system which the more people are aware of it, the more it works for you. Without it turning into a Pyramid Scheme. In fact, the Stock Market Bubble was a pyramid scheme. Eventually, the people on the bottom level of the pyramid had to lose. Well, that's the puzzle. Can it be solved?
Redirection and evolution. Before the masses of Elite can be culled together, there must exist a clear vision of how they all benefit - and how there need not be a pyramid for this to occur. If I had had this vision I would have brought it forth already, but alas, I do not. There is hope yet. Within the 16k+ members here at Elite there is great diversity. The personal edge of each trader is undoubtedly different, and if these varying skills can be unified there exists a much greater probability of creating the elusive Edge. This is a call to arms of the best and brightest in the many aspects of sound trading and systems developement. Team Stone Soup Kettle is looking for members: Who here is best at translating from english to binary code? Who here prides themselves on the most thorough and creative backtesting? Who here knows how to properly form a forward-testing process? Who sees the big picture, and who takes pride in the details? This list is far from complete, but maybe, just maybe the list will be twelve and they will don themselves Stone Kettle Soup's Dirty Dozen. p.s. Phase one of this project, what was proposed at the outset of this thread, is akin to a warm-up game. I tried to make clear how no one need reveal any secrets and yet this still proved a sticking point. A secretive bunch traders are; this may take some time, but as my pappy always said: the race goes to neither the swift nor the strong, but to those who persevere.
if you're trading a very liquid market like spoos futures then your "super-strategy" is still a drop in the bucket even if 100 others use it. and no don't think it's soooooo good that it will be picked up by some institution, again that's paranoia. if you trade some pos low priced low volume stocks, then of course yes, there would be more slippage, etc. but the basic reason for not sharing is NOT fear of reduced effecitiveness. it's the simple human unwillingness to share something of value; being afraid you won't get something in return. so more often than not reduced effectiveness is used as an excuse by those simply unwilling to share who wouldn't share anyway.
Your idea has validity but the structure may need to be evaluated. I've set up a few alliances and they take time and the signing of nda documents. They also can take a formal company for the participants to assign loyalty to. Typically, as you elluded to, everyone has to have value to add for others to sold on the idea. In the end they have had enourmous positive benefits for me. Best to you.
In the Stone Soup story, everyone brought whatever they had to throw in the kettle. It didn't have to be anything fancy. Mostly what people brought to the kettle was so humble that the people bringing it would come with their eyes lowered, apologizing that they couldn't bring anything more worthwhile. Things that most people would discard: celery leaves, potato peelings, dandelions. It all went in the kettle. What made it work was that no individual item brought had to be magnificent. The accumulated volume and diversity of what was put into the soup was what made it work. Everything, however humble or even seemingly worthless, turned out to have its value when contributed to the larger collection. If the same tactic can be applied to stock trading, we shouldn't need to ask people to reveal their "Edge", or to bring their best strategy. Give us the stuff you can't get any use out of. Somehow, if it all goes in the pot, we may be able to stir up the whole mix and arrive at something worthwhile. In this way, I humbly offered my "Peers Trading" method as a start. I make no claims that it's an Edge, that it's really a great method, that it will work even most of the time. Because it's no holy grail by itself, there's no need for me to be secretive or proprietary about it. It's just there, for what it's worth. But when combined with a bunch of other ideas from other people, other ideas that I myself would never be able to come up with, it may have its contribution to make. If this approach might actually work for trading as well as for soup, it would eliminate the obstacle of proprietary secrecy that everyone feels about their possible or hoped-for Edge in trading. If somehow we can extract some worth out of almost any tidbit of an idea, we might find that there is in fact no holy grail, but that the nearest thing to it is a giant kettle.
Can we come up with something where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. That's the plan in a nutshell. If that's a realistic prospect, then we have the possibility of encouraging others to contribute, when everyone realizes it's to their own advantage to join together. And it doesn't have to happen right away. We can get started, however small, and if it builds, people will be drawn to it on their own.